Showcasing the sexiest, most photogenic game screenshots this side of the Internet

Andy Kelly's Other Places is an homage to the beauty of video games. In fact, the PC Gamer writer calls the project: "A series celebrating beautiful video game worlds." We're inclined to agree and we've decided to showcase some of his greatest works in this month's Graphics Porn. They're not exactly screenshots, but Andy's videos capture these places in a way that photographs cannot. The videos range from compilations to well-edited footage of specific locations like Far Cry 4's Kyrat.

It's battle-ready and beautiful at the same time

James Walter is back with yet another stellar PC for this month's Rig of the Month. It's a lot like his last build, Parvum Titanfall, but that's not a bad thing. James's obvious attention to detail makes a triumphant return in a case that's based on the design of the offical Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Xbox One controller.

The science and testing behind Logitech’s gaming mice

While Logitech is generally viewed as a peripheral manufacturer, the company views itself as a technology company. In an attempt to show PC gamers that it uses cutting-edge design methodologies, Logitech invited us to its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland to show us how the company designs and tests it gaming mice.

We tried Microsoft's augmented reality demo and couldn’t stop smiling

Many suspected that Microsoft would toss its hat into the virtual reality headset game. After all, Oculus VR was successful enough with its Kickstarter campaign that Facebook ended up purchasing it for $two billion, and longtime console rival Sony jumped into the fray not long ago with its Project Morpheus. While Microsoft did reveal its own head-mounted display, the HoloLens isn’t competing in the VR space, but is instead paving new paths for augmented realities. We got a chance to try it ourselves and you’re probably wondering, “Is it any good?” Simply put, if it's executed correctly, it has the potential to be transformative.

Free alternatives to Photoshop

It’s hard to justify paying for photo-editing software if you’re not a professional photographer, designer, or artist. Fortunately, there are a ton of capable, free alternatives. The list includes age-old standbys like GIMP along with relative newcomers like PicMonkey and Autodesk’s Pixlr.

Great sound is a gaming necessity—we put six hotshot headsets to the test

For a gamer, top-notch sound is just as important as great graphics. Fancy, polygon-pushing GPUs may get all the attention in gaming, but if you pair them with a crappy pair of speakers or a low-rent headset, you’re ruining the immersion and depriving yourself of a competitive advantage.

Note: This article was taken from the June 2014 issue of the magazine.

Not sure where to start in Photoshop? Here's a crash course on the basics

Photoshop is a powerful application that can be used for a variety of purposes, from editing photos or other images to graphic design and 3D art to light videography work. But Photoshop's power and versatility can also make it incredibly intimidating. The program’s main window is strewn with 20 different tools plus a ton of filter effects and image layers to top it all off. While Photoshop may be as understandable as Sanskrit to a novice, we’re going to show you how to get started with the basics.

Multi-bay NAS storage shootout

There’s nothing quite like having a system fail and then realizing you hadn't backed up your data. In the back of your mind, you always knew this day might come, but procrastination and poor planning has caught you with your pants down, and you have no one to blame but yourself. “Never again!” you shout, but as your anger eventually subsides, so does your impetus to do something about it.

CyberPower Trinity PC, tiny PC on an HDMI stick, and more

While CES 2015 was more of an evolutionary year as opposed to a revolutionary one, there were some interesting devices in the PC space. If you’ve read our CES 2015 prediction piece, nearly all of that came true. We saw a bunch of VR headsets, assisted driving cars, and more. We’ve highlighted our favorite hardware from the show below.

Did you have a favorite piece of hardware from CES this year? Let us know in the comments below!

Get more out of Google Drive

With 240 million monthly active users, there's a good chance that if you're reading this, you've used Google Drive before. The cloud-based file storage and synchronization service is far more than a virtual storage container, it's also a parking spot for several of Google's other services, such as the company's productivity suite: Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. By binding these (and other) services together, Google is able to integrate intelligent functionality, such as real-time collaborative edits.